He held it out upon the flat of his palm, the better for Cleek to see and to admire it, and signed to his son to hand the visitor a magnifying glass.

“Wonderful, most wonderful!” observed Cleek, bending over the spurious gem and focussing the glass upon it; not, however, for the purpose of studying the fraud, but to examine something just noticed—­something round and red and angry-looking which marked the palm itself, at the base of the middle finger.

“No wonder you are proud of such a prize.  I think I should go off my head with rapture if I owned an antique like that.  But, pardon me, have you met with an accident, Mr. Bawdrey?  That’s an ugly place you have on your palm.”

“That?  Oh, that’s nothing,” he answered, gaily.  “It itches a great deal at times, but otherwise it isn’t troublesome.  I can’t think how in the world I got it, to tell the truth.  It came out as a sort of red blister in the beginning, and since it broke it has been spreading a great deal.  But, really, it doesn’t amount to anything at all.”

“Oh, that’s just like you, dad,” put in Philip, “always making light of the wretched thing.  I notice one thing, however, Rickaby, it seems to grow worse instead of better.  And dad knows as well as I do when it began.  It came out suddenly about a fortnight ago, after he had been holding some green worsted for my stepmother to wind into balls.  Just look at it, will you, old chap?”

“Nonsense, nonsense!” chimed in the old man, laughingly.  “Don’t mind the silly boy, Mr. Rickaby.  He will have it that that green worsted is to blame, just because he happened to spy the thing the morning after.”

“Let’s have a look at it,” said Cleek, moving nearer the light.  Then, after a close examination, “I don’t think it amounts to anything, after all,” he added, as he laid aside the glass.  “I shouldn’t worry myself about it if I were you, Phil.  It’s just an ordinary blister, nothing more.  Let’s go on with the collection, Mr. Bawdrey; I’m deeply interested in it, I assure you.  Never saw such a marvellous lot.  Got any more amazing things—­gems, I mean—­like that wonderful scarab?  I say!”—­halting suddenly before a long, narrow case, with a glass front, which stood on end in a far corner, and, being lined with black velvet, brought into ghastly prominence the suspended shape of a human skeleton contained within—­“I say!  What the dickens is this?  Looks like a doctor’s specimen, b’gad.  You haven’t let anybody—­I mean, you haven’t been buying any prehistoric bones, have you, Mr. Bawdrey?”

“Oh, that?” laughed the old man, turning round and seeing to what he was alluding.  “Oh, that’s a curiosity of quite a different sort, Mr. Rickaby.  You are right in saying it looks like a doctor’s specimen.  It is—­or, rather, it was.  Mrs. Bawdrey’s father was a doctor, and it once belonged to him.  Properly, it ought to have no place in a collection of this sort, but—­well, it’s such an amazing thing I couldn’t quite refuse it a place, sir.  It’s a freak of nature.  The skeleton of a nine-fingered man.”